Three sentence movie reviews: Bringing Up Baby.

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival.

Amusing throughout, but I couldn’t help but feel annoyed at Katherine Hepburn’s character.  Full of lots of zany hijinks that make this a good family-friendly film.  I think my favorite line came from Aunt Elizabeth:  “I’ve always wanted a leopard!”*

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1938/bringing_up_baby.html

*Really?  Times sure have changed.

Three sentence movie reviews: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival

This looked dumb, but it was on the list and so I watched it.  I’m a fan of both of the leads in this motion picture, so I had that going for me, but even so, I was pleasantly surprised to greatly enjoy this movie.  It had a good blend of comic and tender moments.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2003/how_to_lose_a_guy_in_ten_days.html

Three sentence movie reviews: Addicted to Love

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival

This movie was bizarre, mostly because the main characters were doing really horrible things* that in real life you would be suing if you found out someone was doing to you.  So I guess good that they found each other, freaky weirdos.  Also, as a side note, for years I’ve seen this cover and guessed that Meg Ryan was a cheerleader, based on the tank top she’s wearing on the cover.**

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1997/addicted_to_love_ver1.html

*Spying on ex-partners, bugging the apartment, plotting to break them up.  Though the camera obscura did lend a nice touch to their stalking.
**Spoiler alert, she’s not.  It’s just a very cheerlead-y looking top.

Three sentence movie reviews: An Officer and a Gentleman

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival

From a feminist perspective, this was interesting viewing, as you get the traditional fairy tale* story and also the feminist tale of a woman striving to break glass ceilings.  Of course, the feminist story is merely a subplot, but I’ll take it.  The sex scenes were pretty hot and overall it went in directions I didn’t think it would go, so I was pretty happy with this flick.

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home.

*I knew the ending of this before I started watching it, due to it being referenced fairly often as a “good movie ending”

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1982/officer_and_a_gentleman.html

Three sentence movie reviews: The African Queen

Part of the Ruby Oliver Film Festival.

This is another one of those classics that’s actually fun, not a grind to sit through.  I loved Hepburn’s embrace of the crazy that her life had become and the freedom it brought her.  It was also both amusing and gripping in places and packed much more of a punch than I expected.

Cost:  free from library
Where watched: at home.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/1951/african_queen.html
The tag on that poster (Actually filmed in the splendor and dangers of the Belgian Congo!) reminded me of my favorite part of the credits.  At the very end it said, “Filmed on location in Africa and Sussix England”  You know, because “Africa” is a small place, so we know exactly where you are talking about.
I also this poster for being so bodice-ripper.

Introducing: The Ruby Oliver Film Festival

Those of you who are regular readers know that I love movies.  And you also know that I despair because so many movies are BOY movies and, while enjoyable to me, I long for more GIRL movies.  I plan to watch a goodly amount of movies this summer.  But what movies to watch?  A lot of films-to-watch lists are full of very vital and weighty flicks, mostly featuring men doing men things.  I’m not looking for that right now, I want fun. Interesting.  Movies women like.

Enter Ruby Oliver.  She’s not a real person, but a character in a series of very funny YA novels by E. Lockheart.  They all seem to have the same name, but if you are looking for the first one, it’s called The Boyfriend List. When the series begins, Ruby Oliver is a sophomore at a private school in Seattle and she has just lost her boyfriend, all of her friends, and is having panic attacks.  Ruby Oliver’s tale of how she recovers from all that (and more) is told in a breezy style that includes perhaps my favorite thing in the book world:  footnotes.

Ruby Oliver also loves movies.  So in her amusing and digressive footnotes, she often makes lists of movies on one topic or another.  I have seen many of these movies, but not all of them.  A-ha!  A bolt of inspiration.  My next movie project will be to go through all her lists, spanning footnotes in four books, and watch the ones I haven’t seen.

Here’s my list, copied word-for-word from the novels.  Stay tuned for reviews.  And check out Ruby Oliver.  She’s worth your time.

Titles in bold have not yet been watched.  When movies repeat, I chose to bold them again.

Note that most of these lists titles contain spoilers.

Book 1 
The Boyfriend List

Movies where the couples hate each other half the time:
10 Things I Hate About You
One Fine Day
When Harry Met Sally
You’ve Got Mail
Intolerable Cruelty
The African Queen
Addicted to Love
Bringing Up Baby
The Goodbye Girl
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
As Good as it Gets
French Kiss
Groundhog Day
A Life Less Ordinary
///
Movies where after breaking up, it turns out the man actually loves the woman madly and can’t exist without her:
Pretty Woman
An Officer and a Gentleman
Bridget Jones’s Diary
The Truth About Cats & Dogs
Reality Bites
Jerry Maguire
Persuasion
High Fidelity
Say Anything
Plus:
Notting Hill
Grease
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Runaway Bride
(only the woman comes back to the man.)
///
Movies where the apparently hopeless dorky guy who’s been there all along eventually gets the girl:
The Wedding Singer
Dumb and Dumber
When Harry Met Sally
There’s Something About Mary
Beauty and the Beast
While You Were Sleeping
Revenge of the Nerds
Lots of Woody Allen movies
//
(bonus content from questions at the end of book one) 
E. Lockheart’s all-time top ten movie list:
Gregory’s Girl
Repo Man
Annie Hall
Grease
His Girl Friday
Bringing Up Baby
Cabaret
Moulin Rouge
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Singin’ in the Rain
Book 2 
The Boy Book

Pod-robot.  A person with no feelings or memory, but otherwise indistinguishable from a regular human.  Possibly an alien life-form; possibly a robot.  See:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Puppet Masters
Westworld
The Terminator Movies
The Stepford Wives (either version)
Solaris (either version)
Village of the Damned.
(There are also lots of touchy-feely movies where the faux humans develop emotions, like
Bicentennial Man
I, Robot
A.I: Artificial Intelligence.)

///
Movies where a wild girl enchants and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary (but still attractive) man:
Along Came Polly
Something Wild
Pretty Woman
Addicted to Love
Bringing Up Baby
Chasing Amy
What’s Up, Doc?
Cabaret
The Seven Year Itch
Garden State
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Moulin Rouge
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
My Fair Lady
Funny Face
Annie Hall
Sleeper (okay, so Woody Allen is not attractive or ordinary, but still).
  
 Book 3 
The Treasure Map of Boys
Movies in which a makeover facilitates love:
Grease
Pretty Woman
Sabrina (both versions)
Working Girl
Clueless
The Breakfast Club
My Fair Lady
She’s All That
The Mirror Has Two Faces
Cinderella
Now, Voyager
Strictly Ballroom
Miss Congeniality
Moonstruck
The Princess Diaries
Never Been Kissed

///
Movie in which the woman dies and thereby helps the hero to realize his full manly potential in the world, only, of course, bad luck for her because she’s dead:
Moulin Rouge
Braveheart
City of Angles/Wings of Desire (same plot, different films)
Dangerous Liaisons
Sweeny Todd (well, he only thinks she’s dead and becomes a total psycho, but still)
A Walk to Remember
The Prestige
Casino Royale (the Daniel Craig one, not the Woody Allen one)
Harold and Maude
Love Story
Finding Neverland.

///
Movies in which the romantic heroine sports Birkenstocks:
none

///
Here’s a list we came up with, with help from the Internet. Movies that make prostitution seem like a glam job in which you might end up falling in love with a supercute and quality guy such as a young Christian Slater or Ewan McGregor:
Moulin Rouge
Pretty Woman
Trading Places
Milk Money
The Girl Next Door
Risky Business
Irma la Douce
From Here to Eternity
Klute
Memoirs of a Geisha
L.A. Confidential
Night Shift (1982)
True Romance

///

[Ruby and her friend Hutch have a documentary film festival]
We watched:
March of the Penguins
Super Size Me
Spellbound
American Movie
Mad Hot Ballroom
Grizzly Man
Hoop Dreams
Shut Up & Sing—and for Hutch
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.  Which is about a retro-metal band in group therapy, if you can believe it.
Book 4
Real Live Boyfriends
Movies where a quality guy loves a girl and sticks with her even though she’s one or another kind of insane—maybe alcoholic, maybe addict, maybe psychotic or depressed:
Mad Love
When a Man Loves A Woman
Bed of Roses
Benny & Joon
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
50 First Dates
Almost Famous
Proof
Center Stage
The Hours
My Sassy Girl
What Dreams May Come
Rachel Getting Married
Forrest Gump (if you consider him a quality guy)
Betty Blue
But in real life, I think ti’s more likely the guy gets sick of the girl’s insane behavior and goes off with a nice normal person to live happily ever after.  And who can blame him?
///
Movies where the safe responsible guy is revealed as a jerk—thus freeing the heroine to leave him for someone more exciting:
Desperately Seeking Susan
The Wedding Singer
The Holiday
Legally Blond
Sliding Doors
French Kiss
Bring It On
Working Girl
Sex, Lies & Videotape
George of the Jungle
///
Movies where a brooding, even sulky guy seems like a good idea for a quality boyfriend:
Twilight
10 Things I Hate About You
Edward Scissorhands
Pump Up the Volume
Heathers (until the end)
The Breakfast Club
The Bourne Identity
Grosse Pointe Blank
Angel Eyes
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Beauty and the Beast
Reality Bites
Donnie Darko
Wuthering Heights
Good Will Hunting
The Piano
Rebecca
Rebel Without a Cause